Research Interests: public policy, gender - comparative social welfare policy, variation across the industrialized countries and throughout the U.S. states. Much of her work considers the effects of social policy on women's status in the labor market and on the economic well-being of families.

Janet Gornick attended Harvard University, where she was awarded a BA (Psychology and Social Relations 1980), an MPA (Kennedy School 1987), and a PhD (Political Economy and Government 1994). She is currently Professor of Political Science and Sociology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. From September 2006 to August 2016, she served as Director of LIS (formerly, the Luxembourg Income Study), a cross‐national data archive and research center located in Luxembourg, with a satellite office at the Graduate Center. As of September 1, 2016, she serves as Director of the new James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Center on Socio‐Economic Inequality, and as Director of the US Office of LIS.

Most of her research is comparative and concerns social welfare policies and their impact on gender disparities in the labor market and income inequality. She has published articles on gender inequality, employment, and social policy in several journals, including American Sociological Review, Annual Review of Sociology, Social Forces, Socio‐Economic Review, Journal of European Social Policy, European Sociological Review, Social Science Quarterly, Monthly Labor Review, and Feminist Economics. She served as Guest Editor for “Work‐Family Reconciliation Policies in High‐Employment Economies: Policy Designs and their Consequences,” a special double issue of the Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis (2006‐2007). She regularly presents her work in popular venues, including The American Prospect, Dissent, and Challenge Magazine.

She is co‐author or co‐editor of three books: Families That Work: Policies for Reconciling Parenthood and Employment (Russell Sage Foundation 2003), Gender Equality: Transforming Family Divisions of Labor (Verso Press 2009), and Income Inequality: Economic Disparities and the Middle Class in Affluent Countries (Stanford University Press 2013).

Her research has been generously supported by many sponsors, including the Russell Sage Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM), the Department of Health and Human Services (USDHHS), the Social Security Administration (SSA), the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Governors' Association (NGA), the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and the World Bank.

She has served on several advisory boards, including: A Better Balance: The Work and Family Legal Center; the Journal of European Social Policy; IPUMS‐International; Statistics Canada’s Advisory Committee on Labour and Income Statistics; the German Socio‐Economic Panel (GSOEP); and the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR).